Classic American People Part 2 - Bruce Meyer
Bruce Meyer
“THE Car Guy”
Steve Havelock concludes his profile of the man that Jay Leno calls “THE Car Guy”, a well-deserved accolade as this final instalment proves…
In part one, we saw how Bruce’s self-made success in the property business allowed him to indulge his passion for cars, with a particular soft spot for hot rods. Here, he steps up a gear. Bruce, who in his youth did a few years of dirtbike racing, was not content to just cruise around and go to shows in his lovely cars. He wanted a bit more speed, adventure and action, so turned his attention to the origins of hot rodding, the salt flats of Bonneville. He started by driving a friend’s highly tuned and modified ’83 Camaro, which eventually led to him being inducted into the exclusive 200mph Club. Bruce explains: “The 200mph Club is not just for going over 200mph. You actually have to break a land speed record at over 200mph. You can go 280mph, but if you don’t break a record you’re not eligible for the club. The record I broke was set at 197mph and I went 206mph, so that got me in the club. The fastest I ever went in the Camaro was 222mph. I now have my prized 200mph Club ‘Red Hat’.” Bruce also held an ambition to go over 200mph in an open-top hot rod, so he engaged Mike Cook to build him a 1000bhp big-block, Chevy-powered 1929 Ford Roadster. In 2012, he achieved his goal and clocked 204mph in the roadster on the salt. “That was the ride of my life,” he says. “Bonneville is totally addictive. It’s not easy. It’s not like running on pavement; more like a hard-packed dirt road. The cars are a bit loose. It’s like going flat out on a Triumph 650 on a dirt road, it moves around a bit. It’s very tough on the engine. It’s like a three-minute dyno pull. It destroys engines. There are a lot of breakdowns, and the problem is that Speed Week only happens once a year, so you can’t say I’ll come back next week or next month.” At the age of 75, Bruce decided to hang up his crash helmet. He says: “I went into selfpreservation mode. I stopped doing Bonneville, stopped riding motorcycles and stopped skiing. I know that at my age my reactions have slowed right down. It’s important to know your limits.” That’s not to say that Bruce has slowed down in other areas of his life. His life motto is ‘Never Lift’ and he’s pretty much flat out all the time. For starters, he’s heavily involved with the Petersen Automotive Museum, which was founded in 1994. He says: “This has been a big part of my life. Bob Petersen was the publisher of Hot Rod magazine and he lived close to my home. We became very good friends. He found this derelict building in a great spot in LA. He said to me that this would make a great automotive museum. So he contracted for the building and I was the first chairman and I chaired it for the first 10 years. I am currently vice-chairman, but I am probably the most active person that is not an employee of the museum. I am there regularly working hard at it, raising money. In the Nineties I started a group called The Checkered Flag 200. I wanted to get 200 people at $1000 a year donation to the Petersen. I still chair it and I go to every event. We now have almost 650 members and it’s $1700 a year. So we raise over $1million a year for the Petersen. “I also underwrite a gallery in the museum, The Bruce Meyer Family Gallery, which hosts various special exhibitions. A few years ago, one of our board members, David Sydorick, and I were chatting and we realised that our museum was getting old and stale. We’d been going 20 years and it needed a lift and a re-imagining. David led the charge with the architecture, and the two of us decided that we would go for it or go away. We got a world-class architect and we re-did every square inch of the museum, including the facade. It was a $115 million renovation. It was a huge amount of money and I did the fundraising. We finished on time (in 2015) and on budget. “Before we re-did the museum, 70% of the people were coming for the first time. At first we thought that was good, but then we realised that it was a bad statistic because it means that people weren’t returning. Now we have 70% of people coming back. We have a fabulous executive director now, Terry Karges, a great staff, and we all work very well together. We constantly change exhibits to keep it fresh, and admissions are increasing every year. We are one of the few museums of any type in the world that is financially successful.” Bruce often lends his cars to the museum and his collection extends way beyond hot rods. He has rare and exotic Ferraris and Porsches, a trio of uber-desirable Mercedes SL300s, Don ‘The Snake’ Prudhomme’s record-breaking 1962 Greer-Black-Prudhomme dragster, a bevy of Le Mans 24 Hour cars including the No. 2 Briggs Cunningham 1960 Corvette and the No. 63 Corvette that won its class in 2009, and motorbikes galore. He also owns Miss Daytona, a famous 1929 Miller-powered vintage step-hydroplane race boat. He says: “It’s a boat that appeals to me. I’m a fan of Indy, a fan of Miller and of great boats and this is such a good-looking thing.” Bruce continues: “There’s no theme as such. I just buy what I like and what appeals to me. I suppose it all started around 1964. In the beginning, I had to sell cars to buy another, but then I got to the point where I had trouble selling if I really loved the car. So I worked hard and would just buy another. I never had an eye on building a collection. It was just one at a time.